Thanks for your help rharv, justanoldmuso:

rharv - Very good question; when I record on track 2, nothing shows up in the 2 signal VU meters on the left of the track, but the track itself shows as 2 moving horizontal bars: the top bar is green and the bottom is red.

When I play my guitar through the interface, the bottom red bar shows a series of short vertical bars, in yellow mostly, that correspond to me playing. The short vertical yellow bars don't resemble the track 1 audio mp3 image. Perhaps the short vertical bars mean my signal resolution is so bad, that I just get what looks like an excel sheet bar graph instead of audio wave forms.

Nothing shows in the upper green bar. I hadn't considered before the possibility that the upper horizontal bar may be the left channel and the bottom red bar the right channel. Is it possible that the mono signal setting in PTP is recording on the Left channel, but the signal I am sending is getting sent to the right?

Justanoldmuso: well to each their own, but how are you going to learn how your gear works if you don't do some troubleshooting and fixing? Sometimes we need some help from the kind people who have been through much of this before and are willing to help others. Also, that's taking some of the fun and learning out of the exercise.
From the looks of my issue, I would say there is some setting that is incorrect since I'm getting signal to the input of PTP. This strongly suggests that the Yamaha is doing it's job. Buying new gear seems excessive in this case (so far), nothing is proven that leads me to believe this problem with this setup can't be remedied.
That being said, I will hang on to your posted info in case I need it, thanks.